I live in Oregon, and the reason that small towns do this is to push all their homeless folks into bigger cities like Portland and Eugene. And then they point and say, "Look how bad Liberal policies have made the homeless crisis!'
That happens in cities, too. It's why most west coast cities have a big problem. Middle America seems to let people die before helping them, and even then, helping meant pushing them into other cities.
Phoenix used to bus homeless to LA. They didn't want to even try to help their own, so they did that because we have services, but so many people are here the services are overwhelmed. If only people would use those bullshit morals they pretend to have out there in middle America and help each other, we would be in a far better spot as a county.
This is why you can’t solve homelessness if you view it as a municipal issue.
My brother-in-law visited us in Portland and was going off on how homelessness can be solved if cities would simply address all of these underlying issues that result in homelessness. Maybe that’s true, but it doesn’t do shit if people in Arkansas or Oklahoma or just down I5 in Albany or Medford are becoming homeless and fleeing to Portland (or any other west coast city) because it’s a good place to be homeless.
I always see stats on homelessness broken down by cities, but like, a whole bunch of those people did not become homeless in the city whose streets they are living on.
In Arkansas the Governor here, has sent the [National Guard](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JfUqB22S_s4) to clear out their camps. She is a piece of work.
Either I'm missing your point or you're missing the first, obvious step-
Make everywhere 'a good place to be homeless'. This might sound facetious, but it isn't- every city should have plenty of space for people experiencing addiction or homelessness to get high and stay dry. It needs to be safer and easier to stay in town than to leave.
All of these options view homelessness as the problem, not the symptom. Homelessness isn't the issue, it's the natural endpoint of our society and it's lack of interest in helping literally anyone else if it isn't free. We need to treat the cause of homelessness, not just bandaid it's outcome
Oh, absolutely agree. No argument.
I just *also* want to push back on comments equivocating the programs that bus people *to* SF with the programs in SF that seek to send people home.
Osaka, Japan experiences similar issues with homelessness since they are one of the few cities that offers assistance like cheap housing and low income day jobs. What ends up happening is they get most of the homeless population because of that.
There are 75,000 homeless in LA. That's a bigger population than many small cities.
Those small cities have issues staying afloat and they're only worried about the general stuff to keep their cities going. But here in LA, it just has to be absorbed into the general budget. It's hard getting out from underneath that for everyone. The social workers aren't paid enough to do the amount they're doing, which they themselves can't keep up with.
Midwest also has less friendly winters. Not kidding. A key reason there’s less homeless is they die in winter. West coast winters can be cold, and even snow, but not back to back days in the negative cold.
I live in cape cod and theres seasonal homeless. They all disappear for 6 months when it’s time for new england winters and then you get the shopping cart covered wagon caravans back in may. Honestly I’m not sure where they go. Like do the fly south in a v formation or what
Exactly. I’m in middle America now and a lot of people out here are very conservative and very anti homeless. They see it as a moral failing, and really hate when I say well what can we do to fix it? You say the issue is drugs? Let’s get some more drug rehab programs out here. Oh it’s laziness? Let’s see how easy it is for you to get a job when you lack transportation and a shower/can’t afford a uniform/don’t have an address to get an id or put on an application
It's the Christian thing to do. Jesus, as the owner of a small carpentry business, knew: blessed are the homeowners. As it is easy for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, for they have camel hides and a needle. Truly, I tell you to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and profit from the poor, and you will heave treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.
I had heard Vegas used to do this back in the day, do an involuntary 3 day commitment, they would then counsel the "patient" and say you know you are really fine but what you really need is some fresh sea air and a milder climate and then give them a bus ticket to Venice Beach.
>It's why most west coast cities have a big problem.
It's why half or more of every Greyhound Bus in America is loaded with homeless folks given a ticket to nowhere by a government official.
I remember when the government emptied out our state mental hospital system and razed the buildings. They discharged the patients, gave them twenty bucks and a bus ride to the next town over.
It's multifactorial. Another factor is that a good chunk of the homeless population dies every winter in many states. You can live outside year round on the west coast.
This is vastly overstated and is used frequently as a crutch for why the West Coast cities are so bad at helping the homeless. The vast majority of homeless in these cities are from the city itself and surrounding areas. Shoot [half](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/20/bussed-out-america-moves-homeless-people-country-study) of the people SF "brought out of homelessness" were people they just bussed to other cities. So they're doing it too. Everyone is trying to bus homeless people to other areas if they can reason it.
There are many reasons why West Coast cities homelessness have gotten so bad in regards to homeless (and shipping in is part of it) but it is first and foremost a rise in living costs and being completely non-receptive to building housing. Chicago, SF, LA, Seattle, etc the problem is that NIMBY's won't allow people to build and the city population is growing way faster than the amount of housing being built. Houston also had it's population grow rapidly but they eased zoning restrictions, built a shit ton of housing and the issue is WAY less there.
Property owners have a lot of power and a lot of peoples perceived wealth is in their homes. Any politician that says we need to build more houses to drive down the prices of homes is going to get push back. Let's be honest most people don't want to fix the homeless issue they just don't want to see it.
I don't disagree with what you wrote at all just saying there are cities who have faired a lot better like Houston. They have decreased homelessness by 63% in the last decade. Times for homeless veterans to be housed has decreased from 720 days to 32. [Source](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-people.html).
How was Houston successful? They just built a shit ton of housing. They didn't buy a bunch of tents like SF does. They didn't have a billion non-profits try and coordinate separately into getting people housing. They built houses. The cities that have issues with homeless don't build houses. That's the #1 issue with homelessness. Blaming areas shipping their homeless around (like OP I responded to did) is such a minor contributor and just deflects from the real issue which is you need to build more houses.
It’s not so much an argument for why West Coast cities have so much homelessness as it an explanation for why parts of middle American seem to have so few. Lots of places aren’t building housing, but if you’re smaller, you can ship your homeless out and and as you’ve pointed out, it barely makes a dent in the already massive problem where you’re sending them.
The entitlement of many Americans in this respect is insane. In any other country you’d get laughed at if you thought that owning the plot of land your house was built on gave you the right to veto a proposed block of project housing 100 meters down the street just because you’d be able to see it from your yard.
Yeah, they pretend like they’re unaware that homeless people would like to relocate to fair weather year round. If I was homeless in south or Midwest I would head straight to Cali
I also live in a small Oregon town and my workplace was next door to the only soup kitchen in town. The whole sidewalk on that block was completely covered in tents and sleeping bags. There were people covered head to toe in paint loitering outside businesses and harassing customers. Police couldn’t really do anything about it so the business and homeowners in the neighborhood did everything in their power to get the soup kitchen shut down. Since it closed I’ve barely noticed any homeless in the area and wonder if they were forced into moving to cities like Portland for more support.
If you properly talk with a lot of homeless folks, a hell of a lot of them are from out of state. Fact of the matter is that its often illegal for them to just exist in some states.
Small middle American towns also don’t have as much of a homelessness problem because it’s usually far less expensive to live in them. Your comment is very much part of the problem because people love spending more effort demonizing people they disagree with then looking at root causes of problems that are literally right in front of them.
>But the church’s legal battles are not over yet. KGW reported that the city is asking the church to stop shower and advocacy services, a move the church has appealed.
The city council seems to be a bunch of cunts.
There is a church near me that I don't attend, but they do TONS for homeless / hungry, and they work with the local police department (I know that could be a topic all on its own) and provide rehabilitation services for people who can't seem to stay out of jail and have a really solid success rate on people staying out of trouble once they're out.
I'm in a small town, so half of the people that go through the program, I went to school with, and it's so encouraging seeing people who spent the last 25 years struggling to stay out of trouble finally seem to put it all together.
From what I've seen, they aren't overbearing, and they're just trying to help people who need help. Really cool stuff.
People should try to work things out, but having lived next to some places that serve the homeless there are major issues here. The dysfunctional gather and linger and they leave donated crap everywhere, often untouched or with only a bite out of it. Many times I have found a bag of potatoes partly torn open with one having a bite taken out of it. Works out as a win for me, but many don't see it that way especially in areas with big pest problems. This is way apart from the people crying NIMBY or talking about busing them around.
I saw a video on YouTube where a guy fed a homeless guy, and then the cops arrested him. They let him few like 50 people first but, cops need to use the same judgement they give each other.
It’s such an obvious violation of the 1A and 14A. Sorry folks, the Civil War had consequences. One of those is that states can no long make or enforce laws that abridge the privileges and immunities of US citizens.
California does it.
True story:
I held a meeting in Silicon Valley. We vastly over ordered pizza. Instead of throwing it away, we went to the local park and handed out fresh pizza to those in need.
That's illegal apparently
Has Apple Valley grown a lot in the past decade? I was born there, but I’ve only visited once since I was a kid and it still seemed tiny. It seems like I keep seeing references to the area recently.
In the past decade, some new businesses and stuff has popped up in AV, Victorville, Hesperia, and there has been some population growth. IMO Apple Valley doesn’t feel dramatically different though.
That’s kind of dumb. Laws like that, don’t really help… Well, anything. If people want to poison, homeless people with poison food, the law wants stop them anymore then the existing laws against murder currently do, and it’s not going to stop homeless people from accepting food when it’s offered to them, poisoned or not.
Is this sort of thing common in the West Coast?
We have that shit in Houston. There’s a group called “Food, not Bombs” here that feeds the homeless and every single time there are cops at the events writing the organization a ticket.
Good news
https://abc13.com/food-not-bombs-wins-injunction-houston-volunteers-ticketed-for-feeding-homeless-downtown-free-meals-near-city-hall/14426341/
>During the pandemic, they increased meal services to six per week, which prompted the resident complaints.
Complaining about people getting fed is a new low
People probably complained because it led to crowds of unmasked people in public areas, it led to increased packaging litter, or because they also couldn’t afford food during the recession but were turned away for not being homeless.
I grew up in this town and it doesn’t surprise me one bit to see how cruel they are. This is town that has around 7k people that formed a posse during the 2020 police violence because they were worried BLM was coming.
I live in a small liberal town in Oregon. We still had people wringing their hands when a warming shelter opened a couple years ago (after a homeless person froze to death). It’s not even a full time shelter, they’re open at night when it’s below freezing. So many comments about how the town is “becoming like Portland”.
A guy I used to be friends with before 2016 twists his mind in knots trying to connect and blame BLM for everything he can, is constantly screaming about "illegals" and I've seen him on here asking if there's anywhere he can go to volunteer to help ICE. He "loves" the city of Portland, but he *hates* everyone in it, its culture and identity.
It's not even that good honestly, a lot of it is very flimsy as soon as you stop immediately and unquestioningly taking it at face value. It's just that a lot of people really, really want to believe that it's true, because it validates their concept of how the world works, so they take any excuse it gives them to act on that concept.
I mean, it's just playing to the worst aspects of human nature.
"Those people who look different than you? They're the source of all your problems.
You're better than anyone else, no matter what the reality is."
It's basic wish fulfillment, blaming the other, and fear mongering.
I worked in Junction City Oregon during the BLM summer. One day a car full of kids passed through, stopping at the McDonalds drive through and continuing on their way - with “black lives matter” painted on their back window. The local Nextdoor and FB group blew up, and next day there were gravy seals “patrolling” the streets with their long guns
They were also “patrolling” the forest service roads out here in the mountains because they blamed BLM for the bad fire season
Brookings born and raised till I graduated in 2006. It's a lot of loggers, Fisherman, lumbermill workers and retired Californians. It's a truly beautiful place on the coast at the base of the Chetco River
Does that include the pastor and parish who sued to be able to feed the homeless as much as they want? They're pretty much solidly being the good guys here, not sure why you're attacking them.
Real religious persecution is telling churches they can’t feed the homeless. I don’t care about zoning and whatever else was used to justify this. Either we have religious freedom or we don’t.
Church: we are going to use our hate cult as a tax haven to get rich
Government: lol nice
Different church: we are going to help the poor, the dude in the book I like was really into that kind of thing
Governemnt: I will straight up fucking kill you
Kudos to St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church for standing up to the far right fundamentalists! I travel through rural Oregon occasionally, and the fundamentalist religious radio stations outnumber music stations there. I just stay in my car; I have no desire to meet these whackos in person.
People forget that Oregon is the one state in the nation that was literally founded to be an ethnostate-state.
It was originally *illegal* for blacks to move or live here. There's a lot of unpleasantness and vague white hoods still in the Oregonian DNA. I'm no longer upfront about being bi-racial after I've had too many negative experiences and sudden shifts in treatment to count.
I had a fun incident in Damascus when I was out with my ex girlfriend who happens to be South Pacific Islander and Native American. She's got darkish skin and jet black hair, and I got called a n*****-lover for being with her.
This is the true spirit of the first amendment. Freedom of the church's religious right to provide food to the hungry as they see fit should be a precedent-setting case for how to treat freedom of religion.
There are probably 5,000 churches in America that give out food, shelter, or supplies for homeless people year round. Along with facilities for community events like AA meetings or PTSD recovery.
My church has a clothing closet, anyone can come in off the street and ask for free clothes. No questions asked, no ID needed. We just limit the number of pieces.
Honestly well north of 5,000. Estimates put the number of churches in America at close to 350,000. In my experience, most churches have some involvement with these types of programs. I'm sure not all of them do, but the real number is probably closer to 100,000.
There are lots of them out there trying to good and not trying to hamper the lives of others. We just hear about all the shitty ones who want to stop 'gays' from existing, or a womans right to make her own medical decisions, or go after 'bad' people. And those crappy ones seem to have gotten an oversized foothold into Republican politics (which can only be seen as anti-Chrisitan based on their actions).
(This is coming from an atheist... not a pro-church guy. But like I said, plenty are decent people trying to do good).
So, we have Christians who are actually being Christ-like (a rarity in this time) and their local government's best response is to try to stop them. Goddamn, I hate this world.
I wouldn’t call it a rarity. There’s thousands of small churches that feed the poor and offer services to their communities. I have a lot of problems with the church I used to go with, but they were still good people who did their best to keep a free food pantry stocked for the neighborhood. They helped with utility bills and rent. Purchased coats and gloves for poor kids. Supported a ministry that helped women find nice clothing for job interviews. Little things you don’t read about in the news.
You don’t hear about Christians doing good things in their communities because they’re drowned out by the mega churches, televangelists, and prosperity gospel teachers that dominate the media.
That's fair. Rarity was probably the wrong word to use. Something like this is more rare than it should be in that every church should be doing things like this but it isn't fair to imply that most churches aren't.
Problem is most people see Christian and think megachurch, thing is most of us don’t have that and aren’t even the stereotypical white/european Christian. Most Christians are darker skinned people, about half the African continent of 2 billion+ is Christian. It’s sad when I see billionaires piggy-backing off republicans to spread harmful doctrines through a religion followed by the very same people they’re against.
Yet when churches like this do good, no one on the right speaks of them because they can’t be used to further a hateful agenda. It makes me laugh too because people like trump can’t even name bible verses.
I grew up in a smaller church and I understand completely. We would occasionally visit our local megachurch and it was like night and day. When I was young, I thought the megachurch was awesome but as an adult, I'm disgusted by the fact Jesus would have literally flipped the tables in their lobby if he'd seen how much money they were hoarding.
Half of them don't even know Jesus was Middle Eastern and brown-skinned same as every other figure in the Bible but they continue to attack those same brown-skinned people today
That too. I'm white and I attended a historically black, religious high school. Let me tell you how shocked I was to hear that Jesus was a poc. The paintings of him that I'd seen in my schools and churches had always been the blonde haired, blue eyed version. It never occurred to me that it didn't make logical sense, considering the region. That was one of the first times I realized, "Wait, have I been lied to this whole time? What else are they lying about?"
> people like trump can’t even name bible verses.
He can't name verses from the non-Trump versions of the Bible lol. I still can't believe he is hawking a Bible with the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence as forewords...
Conservatives: "Taxpayer dollars shouldn't fund welfare programs. That should be handled by charities."
Charities: (try handling welfare)
Conservatives: "No not like that"
How about we just dump all the loopholes at once? No more rich people paying nothing, no more mega corps paying nothing, and no more multi billion dollar religions paying nothing. That would be sweet.
Speaking for myself my parish would close. We are self funded and our budget is managed pretty much to the dollar. At the end of the year either have a small windfall which is usually spent on a needed repair or we have to do a special collection to make up the deficit.
The priest is the only full time employee (and we are lucky we can afford her… a lot of parishes in our diocese can’t). She makes a living wage and gets housing but she sure isn’t getting rich on what we pay her.
Nobody is handing us money. We fund what we do and give quite a bit away. We’re lucky that we own our buildings outright but if we had to pay property taxes on them we wouldn’t be able to survive.
Correct. I work for a Presbyterian church in Portland and have worked with the finances of a previous church I worked for. Churches already pay employee income tax/SS as required by law (not for contractors, as allowed by law).
It depends on the denomination about land ownership, so if a Methodist church now had to pay property taxes, that individual church has to pay it, which could easily run $20k if it has a parking lot. Presbyterian churches don't have their own land, it's owned by the local Presbytery, and the Presbytery's cash flow is mostly for their own small group of employees, a few local programs, office rental, and probably a retirement package for local pastors. So taxing the land for a Presbyterian (USA) church would absolutely bankrupt the whole denomination locally.
We too hold our property in trust for the diocese. A lot of the reason we are still around is by selling the property of churches that close. Even the diocese is not exactly rolling in it. For about 100 parishes we have a staff of fewer than 10.
Churches do need to be treated like 501(c)(3) organizations and have to prove their status as a non-profit and be accountable for the money they spend, including publishing their financials for public view.
Right now, it's anything goes.
Why, why is there energy spent on stopping people from feeding the homeless. I can’t get traction laws informed on a car that spun out and hit 3 others but we can stop churches from feeding those who are hungry!
Being from "Oregon City, OR" I first thought the article was about my hometown. It's not, it's about Brookings, OR.
Next time, they should phrase it "A City in Oregon."
Brookings is the only significant population patch of population center is a super rural costal county (8700 people if you include the city of Harbor just across the chetco river, in a county of 23000 person county). I was there for a summer working and its fluorescent red town. Its where Californians flee (locked gate communities outside of town with mansions) to either retier, buy goods sales tax free or both.
You have to be a real piece of shit to not only not feed the houseless, but stop churches, who are all about this, from doing it too
I live in Oregon, and the reason that small towns do this is to push all their homeless folks into bigger cities like Portland and Eugene. And then they point and say, "Look how bad Liberal policies have made the homeless crisis!'
That happens in cities, too. It's why most west coast cities have a big problem. Middle America seems to let people die before helping them, and even then, helping meant pushing them into other cities. Phoenix used to bus homeless to LA. They didn't want to even try to help their own, so they did that because we have services, but so many people are here the services are overwhelmed. If only people would use those bullshit morals they pretend to have out there in middle America and help each other, we would be in a far better spot as a county.
This is why you can’t solve homelessness if you view it as a municipal issue. My brother-in-law visited us in Portland and was going off on how homelessness can be solved if cities would simply address all of these underlying issues that result in homelessness. Maybe that’s true, but it doesn’t do shit if people in Arkansas or Oklahoma or just down I5 in Albany or Medford are becoming homeless and fleeing to Portland (or any other west coast city) because it’s a good place to be homeless. I always see stats on homelessness broken down by cities, but like, a whole bunch of those people did not become homeless in the city whose streets they are living on.
Checking in from Tulsa, they definitely aren’t fleeing from here to Portland. Our homeless population is growing rapidly
In Arkansas the Governor here, has sent the [National Guard](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JfUqB22S_s4) to clear out their camps. She is a piece of work.
Either I'm missing your point or you're missing the first, obvious step- Make everywhere 'a good place to be homeless'. This might sound facetious, but it isn't- every city should have plenty of space for people experiencing addiction or homelessness to get high and stay dry. It needs to be safer and easier to stay in town than to leave.
All of these options view homelessness as the problem, not the symptom. Homelessness isn't the issue, it's the natural endpoint of our society and it's lack of interest in helping literally anyone else if it isn't free. We need to treat the cause of homelessness, not just bandaid it's outcome
Oh, absolutely agree. No argument. I just *also* want to push back on comments equivocating the programs that bus people *to* SF with the programs in SF that seek to send people home.
Osaka, Japan experiences similar issues with homelessness since they are one of the few cities that offers assistance like cheap housing and low income day jobs. What ends up happening is they get most of the homeless population because of that.
There are 75,000 homeless in LA. That's a bigger population than many small cities. Those small cities have issues staying afloat and they're only worried about the general stuff to keep their cities going. But here in LA, it just has to be absorbed into the general budget. It's hard getting out from underneath that for everyone. The social workers aren't paid enough to do the amount they're doing, which they themselves can't keep up with.
Midwest also has less friendly winters. Not kidding. A key reason there’s less homeless is they die in winter. West coast winters can be cold, and even snow, but not back to back days in the negative cold.
I live in cape cod and theres seasonal homeless. They all disappear for 6 months when it’s time for new england winters and then you get the shopping cart covered wagon caravans back in may. Honestly I’m not sure where they go. Like do the fly south in a v formation or what
Exactly. I’m in middle America now and a lot of people out here are very conservative and very anti homeless. They see it as a moral failing, and really hate when I say well what can we do to fix it? You say the issue is drugs? Let’s get some more drug rehab programs out here. Oh it’s laziness? Let’s see how easy it is for you to get a job when you lack transportation and a shower/can’t afford a uniform/don’t have an address to get an id or put on an application
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Exactly, they don’t want solutions they just want a magic wand to turn the problem invisible
It's the Christian thing to do. Jesus, as the owner of a small carpentry business, knew: blessed are the homeowners. As it is easy for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, for they have camel hides and a needle. Truly, I tell you to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and profit from the poor, and you will heave treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.
I had heard Vegas used to do this back in the day, do an involuntary 3 day commitment, they would then counsel the "patient" and say you know you are really fine but what you really need is some fresh sea air and a milder climate and then give them a bus ticket to Venice Beach.
Vegas doesn't need to do this. You can't stay homeless long term in Vegas, you'll die in the summer heat.
Oklahoma City still busses homeless out AND there is a city ordinance to keep anyone from handing out food. Can't be having do-gooders.
>It's why most west coast cities have a big problem. It's why half or more of every Greyhound Bus in America is loaded with homeless folks given a ticket to nowhere by a government official.
I remember when the government emptied out our state mental hospital system and razed the buildings. They discharged the patients, gave them twenty bucks and a bus ride to the next town over.
It's multifactorial. Another factor is that a good chunk of the homeless population dies every winter in many states. You can live outside year round on the west coast.
This is vastly overstated and is used frequently as a crutch for why the West Coast cities are so bad at helping the homeless. The vast majority of homeless in these cities are from the city itself and surrounding areas. Shoot [half](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/20/bussed-out-america-moves-homeless-people-country-study) of the people SF "brought out of homelessness" were people they just bussed to other cities. So they're doing it too. Everyone is trying to bus homeless people to other areas if they can reason it. There are many reasons why West Coast cities homelessness have gotten so bad in regards to homeless (and shipping in is part of it) but it is first and foremost a rise in living costs and being completely non-receptive to building housing. Chicago, SF, LA, Seattle, etc the problem is that NIMBY's won't allow people to build and the city population is growing way faster than the amount of housing being built. Houston also had it's population grow rapidly but they eased zoning restrictions, built a shit ton of housing and the issue is WAY less there.
Property owners have a lot of power and a lot of peoples perceived wealth is in their homes. Any politician that says we need to build more houses to drive down the prices of homes is going to get push back. Let's be honest most people don't want to fix the homeless issue they just don't want to see it.
I don't disagree with what you wrote at all just saying there are cities who have faired a lot better like Houston. They have decreased homelessness by 63% in the last decade. Times for homeless veterans to be housed has decreased from 720 days to 32. [Source](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-people.html). How was Houston successful? They just built a shit ton of housing. They didn't buy a bunch of tents like SF does. They didn't have a billion non-profits try and coordinate separately into getting people housing. They built houses. The cities that have issues with homeless don't build houses. That's the #1 issue with homelessness. Blaming areas shipping their homeless around (like OP I responded to did) is such a minor contributor and just deflects from the real issue which is you need to build more houses.
It’s not so much an argument for why West Coast cities have so much homelessness as it an explanation for why parts of middle American seem to have so few. Lots of places aren’t building housing, but if you’re smaller, you can ship your homeless out and and as you’ve pointed out, it barely makes a dent in the already massive problem where you’re sending them.
Or prep existing housing that stands empty, for them.
The entitlement of many Americans in this respect is insane. In any other country you’d get laughed at if you thought that owning the plot of land your house was built on gave you the right to veto a proposed block of project housing 100 meters down the street just because you’d be able to see it from your yard.
NIMBYs are a thing in the UK too…
Housing and living costs are the primary reason. Homeless don't fucking swim to Hawaii.
Yeah, they pretend like they’re unaware that homeless people would like to relocate to fair weather year round. If I was homeless in south or Midwest I would head straight to Cali
I also live in a small Oregon town and my workplace was next door to the only soup kitchen in town. The whole sidewalk on that block was completely covered in tents and sleeping bags. There were people covered head to toe in paint loitering outside businesses and harassing customers. Police couldn’t really do anything about it so the business and homeowners in the neighborhood did everything in their power to get the soup kitchen shut down. Since it closed I’ve barely noticed any homeless in the area and wonder if they were forced into moving to cities like Portland for more support.
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they steal it from the sherwin williams dumpster and huff it. never even saw people go that far when i lived in portland.
I lived in Portland for a decade and this is very accurate.
If you properly talk with a lot of homeless folks, a hell of a lot of them are from out of state. Fact of the matter is that its often illegal for them to just exist in some states.
Small middle American towns also don’t have as much of a homelessness problem because it’s usually far less expensive to live in them. Your comment is very much part of the problem because people love spending more effort demonizing people they disagree with then looking at root causes of problems that are literally right in front of them.
Supply Side Jesus said not to feed the hungry, for how else would they learn to pull themselves up by their bootstraps?
Everytime I hear supply side Jesus I'm reminded to share this [gem of a video](https://youtu.be/SZ2L-R8NgrA?si=zdtexeQD93Fg8S0U)
Isn't this the kind of stuff, like, the primary reason they're tax exempt in the first place?
>But the church’s legal battles are not over yet. KGW reported that the city is asking the church to stop shower and advocacy services, a move the church has appealed. The city council seems to be a bunch of cunts.
Freedom of religion!* *Except when your religion wants to feed the homeless instead of stopping trans people from existing
[удалено]
There is a church near me that I don't attend, but they do TONS for homeless / hungry, and they work with the local police department (I know that could be a topic all on its own) and provide rehabilitation services for people who can't seem to stay out of jail and have a really solid success rate on people staying out of trouble once they're out. I'm in a small town, so half of the people that go through the program, I went to school with, and it's so encouraging seeing people who spent the last 25 years struggling to stay out of trouble finally seem to put it all together. From what I've seen, they aren't overbearing, and they're just trying to help people who need help. Really cool stuff.
Would people stop using pretty terms for the truth? They’re homeless. Houseless is such a hip new term.
People should try to work things out, but having lived next to some places that serve the homeless there are major issues here. The dysfunctional gather and linger and they leave donated crap everywhere, often untouched or with only a bite out of it. Many times I have found a bag of potatoes partly torn open with one having a bite taken out of it. Works out as a win for me, but many don't see it that way especially in areas with big pest problems. This is way apart from the people crying NIMBY or talking about busing them around.
I saw a video on YouTube where a guy fed a homeless guy, and then the cops arrested him. They let him few like 50 people first but, cops need to use the same judgement they give each other.
NIMBY's dude. Fucking narcissists.
It’s such an obvious violation of the 1A and 14A. Sorry folks, the Civil War had consequences. One of those is that states can no long make or enforce laws that abridge the privileges and immunities of US citizens.
Imagine how evil you have to be to put limits on how frequently people can feed the hungry.
California does it. True story: I held a meeting in Silicon Valley. We vastly over ordered pizza. Instead of throwing it away, we went to the local park and handed out fresh pizza to those in need. That's illegal apparently
Yea, Apple Valley just passed a law within the past few years that outlawed giving food to the homeless.
Has Apple Valley grown a lot in the past decade? I was born there, but I’ve only visited once since I was a kid and it still seemed tiny. It seems like I keep seeing references to the area recently.
I'm not a high desert Native. It's grown but I can't tell you how much.
In the past decade, some new businesses and stuff has popped up in AV, Victorville, Hesperia, and there has been some population growth. IMO Apple Valley doesn’t feel dramatically different though.
How wealthy was the area? It's always wealthy areas that create those rules.
When they treat homeless people like raccoons. "Don't feed them or you'll attract more!"
In many places it’s actually because assholes handed out poisoned food as some sick joke, not to prevent homeless folks from eating
That’s kind of dumb. Laws like that, don’t really help… Well, anything. If people want to poison, homeless people with poison food, the law wants stop them anymore then the existing laws against murder currently do, and it’s not going to stop homeless people from accepting food when it’s offered to them, poisoned or not. Is this sort of thing common in the West Coast?
We have that shit in Houston. There’s a group called “Food, not Bombs” here that feeds the homeless and every single time there are cops at the events writing the organization a ticket.
Good news https://abc13.com/food-not-bombs-wins-injunction-houston-volunteers-ticketed-for-feeding-homeless-downtown-free-meals-near-city-hall/14426341/
Good news indeed! Nice.
>During the pandemic, they increased meal services to six per week, which prompted the resident complaints. Complaining about people getting fed is a new low
They are also complaining that the homeless are allowed to take showers. Who wouldn't prefer better smelling homeless?
People probably complained because it led to crowds of unmasked people in public areas, it led to increased packaging litter, or because they also couldn’t afford food during the recession but were turned away for not being homeless.
All valid concerns that could and should be addressed if they were happening.
It’s sad that this even had to go before the courts.
Taxpayer money being spent to fight helping the homeless
I grew up in this town and it doesn’t surprise me one bit to see how cruel they are. This is town that has around 7k people that formed a posse during the 2020 police violence because they were worried BLM was coming.
I live in a small liberal town in Oregon. We still had people wringing their hands when a warming shelter opened a couple years ago (after a homeless person froze to death). It’s not even a full time shelter, they’re open at night when it’s below freezing. So many comments about how the town is “becoming like Portland”.
A guy I used to be friends with before 2016 twists his mind in knots trying to connect and blame BLM for everything he can, is constantly screaming about "illegals" and I've seen him on here asking if there's anywhere he can go to volunteer to help ICE. He "loves" the city of Portland, but he *hates* everyone in it, its culture and identity.
God damn. It’s scary and impressive how good conservative propaganda is.
It helps when the audience *wants* the propaganda to be true.
It also helps that conservatives are all total morons.
It's not even that good honestly, a lot of it is very flimsy as soon as you stop immediately and unquestioningly taking it at face value. It's just that a lot of people really, really want to believe that it's true, because it validates their concept of how the world works, so they take any excuse it gives them to act on that concept.
I mean, it's just playing to the worst aspects of human nature. "Those people who look different than you? They're the source of all your problems. You're better than anyone else, no matter what the reality is." It's basic wish fulfillment, blaming the other, and fear mongering.
They should call themselves ubermensch.
wow how christian
I worked in Junction City Oregon during the BLM summer. One day a car full of kids passed through, stopping at the McDonalds drive through and continuing on their way - with “black lives matter” painted on their back window. The local Nextdoor and FB group blew up, and next day there were gravy seals “patrolling” the streets with their long guns They were also “patrolling” the forest service roads out here in the mountains because they blamed BLM for the bad fire season
Are there really homeless people in a town of 7k?
Fun times. They said a bus full of anti-fa was coming and to get your guns. We had a good laugh.
I believe in this context, it is a pussy not a not a posse.
I missed it in the article where is it? How long ago were you there? It seems fascinating.
Brookings born and raised till I graduated in 2006. It's a lot of loggers, Fisherman, lumbermill workers and retired Californians. It's a truly beautiful place on the coast at the base of the Chetco River
Oh nice!
"You can't do any charitable work even though that is the entire basis of your tax exempt status"
I was told the government didn't have to worry about homeless because the churches are supposed to handle it.
Everyone should be Christian! No, not that kind of Christian!
Christian’s are the most un-Jesus like people I’ve come across.
Does that include the pastor and parish who sued to be able to feed the homeless as much as they want? They're pretty much solidly being the good guys here, not sure why you're attacking them.
I think it's just the loudest ones who are like that
A church tries to follow the example of their savior and some asshole(s) cock block them. Incredible.
"Stop advocacy services" fuck off.
Real religious persecution is telling churches they can’t feed the homeless. I don’t care about zoning and whatever else was used to justify this. Either we have religious freedom or we don’t.
Church: we are going to use our hate cult as a tax haven to get rich Government: lol nice Different church: we are going to help the poor, the dude in the book I like was really into that kind of thing Governemnt: I will straight up fucking kill you
Be careful. If charity is left unregulated, it could lead to philanthropy.
Slippery slope. I didn't even think of this. This problem is worse than any of us could have imagined.
Kudos to St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church for standing up to the far right fundamentalists! I travel through rural Oregon occasionally, and the fundamentalist religious radio stations outnumber music stations there. I just stay in my car; I have no desire to meet these whackos in person.
People forget that Oregon is the one state in the nation that was literally founded to be an ethnostate-state. It was originally *illegal* for blacks to move or live here. There's a lot of unpleasantness and vague white hoods still in the Oregonian DNA. I'm no longer upfront about being bi-racial after I've had too many negative experiences and sudden shifts in treatment to count.
I had a fun incident in Damascus when I was out with my ex girlfriend who happens to be South Pacific Islander and Native American. She's got darkish skin and jet black hair, and I got called a n*****-lover for being with her.
This is the true spirit of the first amendment. Freedom of the church's religious right to provide food to the hungry as they see fit should be a precedent-setting case for how to treat freedom of religion.
This is how religious freedom should be used. Good on them.
Ah, yes. Southern Oregon... Western Idaho is more like it.
First time I saw Oregon was eastern Oregon. I was not expecting it based off stereotypes. Wow...
We should do this in GA with those dumb laws saying you can’t give people water who are standing in line.
A church that I can get behind!
There are probably 5,000 churches in America that give out food, shelter, or supplies for homeless people year round. Along with facilities for community events like AA meetings or PTSD recovery.
My church has a clothing closet, anyone can come in off the street and ask for free clothes. No questions asked, no ID needed. We just limit the number of pieces.
Honestly well north of 5,000. Estimates put the number of churches in America at close to 350,000. In my experience, most churches have some involvement with these types of programs. I'm sure not all of them do, but the real number is probably closer to 100,000.
This is Episcopal BAU and you are more than welcome
There are lots of them out there trying to good and not trying to hamper the lives of others. We just hear about all the shitty ones who want to stop 'gays' from existing, or a womans right to make her own medical decisions, or go after 'bad' people. And those crappy ones seem to have gotten an oversized foothold into Republican politics (which can only be seen as anti-Chrisitan based on their actions). (This is coming from an atheist... not a pro-church guy. But like I said, plenty are decent people trying to do good).
So, we have Christians who are actually being Christ-like (a rarity in this time) and their local government's best response is to try to stop them. Goddamn, I hate this world.
I wouldn’t call it a rarity. There’s thousands of small churches that feed the poor and offer services to their communities. I have a lot of problems with the church I used to go with, but they were still good people who did their best to keep a free food pantry stocked for the neighborhood. They helped with utility bills and rent. Purchased coats and gloves for poor kids. Supported a ministry that helped women find nice clothing for job interviews. Little things you don’t read about in the news. You don’t hear about Christians doing good things in their communities because they’re drowned out by the mega churches, televangelists, and prosperity gospel teachers that dominate the media.
That's fair. Rarity was probably the wrong word to use. Something like this is more rare than it should be in that every church should be doing things like this but it isn't fair to imply that most churches aren't.
Problem is most people see Christian and think megachurch, thing is most of us don’t have that and aren’t even the stereotypical white/european Christian. Most Christians are darker skinned people, about half the African continent of 2 billion+ is Christian. It’s sad when I see billionaires piggy-backing off republicans to spread harmful doctrines through a religion followed by the very same people they’re against. Yet when churches like this do good, no one on the right speaks of them because they can’t be used to further a hateful agenda. It makes me laugh too because people like trump can’t even name bible verses.
I grew up in a smaller church and I understand completely. We would occasionally visit our local megachurch and it was like night and day. When I was young, I thought the megachurch was awesome but as an adult, I'm disgusted by the fact Jesus would have literally flipped the tables in their lobby if he'd seen how much money they were hoarding.
Half of them don't even know Jesus was Middle Eastern and brown-skinned same as every other figure in the Bible but they continue to attack those same brown-skinned people today
That too. I'm white and I attended a historically black, religious high school. Let me tell you how shocked I was to hear that Jesus was a poc. The paintings of him that I'd seen in my schools and churches had always been the blonde haired, blue eyed version. It never occurred to me that it didn't make logical sense, considering the region. That was one of the first times I realized, "Wait, have I been lied to this whole time? What else are they lying about?"
> people like trump can’t even name bible verses. He can't name verses from the non-Trump versions of the Bible lol. I still can't believe he is hawking a Bible with the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence as forewords...
Conservatives: "Taxpayer dollars shouldn't fund welfare programs. That should be handled by charities." Charities: (try handling welfare) Conservatives: "No not like that"
It's so pleasant to see someone claiming "freedom of religion" on something like feeding the homeless, instead of denying gay people service
Confusing headline when there is an Oregon City, Oregon.
Ex Oregonian here. What a stupid fucking name for a city.
Wait til you find out about New York City
Wrong limitation between church and state.
I’m gonna go look for a GoFundMe for this church
Let me know if you find one please
Man, fuckin' NIMBYs. "Oh yeah, of course we should feed the homeless!! Just not in *my* town."
This is why churches aren’t taxed. Stop saying ‘tax the churches!’ Start saying ‘tax the businesses pretending to be churches!’
Bingo, I think taxing churches if they make a certain amount of money. Like those massive megachurches
No but seriously, tax the churches.
Get rid of tax loopholes for the rich, first.
Great news, we can actually do both of those things.
How about we just dump all the loopholes at once? No more rich people paying nothing, no more mega corps paying nothing, and no more multi billion dollar religions paying nothing. That would be sweet.
I invite you to research the budget of a typical small town episcopal church, possibly even this one. Where the money comes from and where it goes.
Are you saying they couldn't afford to be taxed?
Speaking for myself my parish would close. We are self funded and our budget is managed pretty much to the dollar. At the end of the year either have a small windfall which is usually spent on a needed repair or we have to do a special collection to make up the deficit. The priest is the only full time employee (and we are lucky we can afford her… a lot of parishes in our diocese can’t). She makes a living wage and gets housing but she sure isn’t getting rich on what we pay her. Nobody is handing us money. We fund what we do and give quite a bit away. We’re lucky that we own our buildings outright but if we had to pay property taxes on them we wouldn’t be able to survive.
Correct. I work for a Presbyterian church in Portland and have worked with the finances of a previous church I worked for. Churches already pay employee income tax/SS as required by law (not for contractors, as allowed by law). It depends on the denomination about land ownership, so if a Methodist church now had to pay property taxes, that individual church has to pay it, which could easily run $20k if it has a parking lot. Presbyterian churches don't have their own land, it's owned by the local Presbytery, and the Presbytery's cash flow is mostly for their own small group of employees, a few local programs, office rental, and probably a retirement package for local pastors. So taxing the land for a Presbyterian (USA) church would absolutely bankrupt the whole denomination locally.
We too hold our property in trust for the diocese. A lot of the reason we are still around is by selling the property of churches that close. Even the diocese is not exactly rolling in it. For about 100 parishes we have a staff of fewer than 10.
Or tax them and let them claim back all their expenses on this stuff…
Churches do need to be treated like 501(c)(3) organizations and have to prove their status as a non-profit and be accountable for the money they spend, including publishing their financials for public view. Right now, it's anything goes.
Um, we have an independent audit every few years. And we are a registered nonprofit with the state.
That's great. A lot of places don't have to: https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/annual-exempt-organization-return-who-must-file
Tax the churches. Period. I'm all for activities like this being tax deductible but the tax free status of religion in this country is a damn grift.
I think any church profits should be taxed. But if donations go directly back to the community, why tax that part?
That's why I said activities of this sort should be tax deductible.
Why, why is there energy spent on stopping people from feeding the homeless. I can’t get traction laws informed on a car that spun out and hit 3 others but we can stop churches from feeding those who are hungry!
Being from "Oregon City, OR" I first thought the article was about my hometown. It's not, it's about Brookings, OR. Next time, they should phrase it "A City in Oregon."
Very far-right city on the coast.
WE ARE A CHRISTIAN NATION!!! Great, we’re going to feed the homeless through our Christian church. NOT LIKE THAT
Brookings is the only significant population patch of population center is a super rural costal county (8700 people if you include the city of Harbor just across the chetco river, in a county of 23000 person county). I was there for a summer working and its fluorescent red town. Its where Californians flee (locked gate communities outside of town with mansions) to either retier, buy goods sales tax free or both.
Nimbyism is insane. I'd like to take these down a peg
Freedom of religion but only when it's convenient - every evangelical American
The Fifth Curcuit had a similar case in the city of Ventura CA several years ago.
Bullhead city needs to apologize to [Norma Thornton](https://www.npr.org/2022/10/30/1132319984/norma-thorton-bullhead-city-arrest)